Thursday, February 26, 2015

With only two weeks left until Greece’s current bailout program expires, Eurozone finance ministers will take another stab at hammering out a deal between Greece and its creditors on Monday. The talks on Monday are key because they’re the last chance for the new Greek government to ask for a technical extension of its current bailout program, which runs out on February 28th. Erin weighs in.

Then, Erin is joined by Marc Faber – editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report and director of Marc Faber Ltd. Marc gives us his macro view on China and the industrial commodities space. In China, Marc believes the real GDP growth rate has slowed to 4%. On the commodities side of things, he believes that the high cost of production will eventually lead to a price resurgence. But he says there will be pain in the short run. Faber also opines on the expensive US market, IPO foibles and the increase in bonds carrying a negative yield. His biggest warning is a 50% correction in shares.

After the break, Boom Bust Producer Bianca Facchinei sits down with DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson to discuss how a government spending bill has halted Initiative 71 – a ballot initiative on legalizing marijuana in the District of Columbia – from proceeding, even though voters already approved of it.

And in Defining Moments, our guests give us their takes on oil, Greece, and quantitative easing. Guests include Steve Keen, Richard Werner, Frances Coppola, Reggie Middleton, John Brynjolfsson, and Jim Pearce. Take a look!

Monday, February 9, 2015

I think the US government, when gold really starts to move, will take it away. They will pay something. Say like in 1933, they paid $25 per ounce of gold that people held, and after they have collected most of the gold – of course not the gold that was held by government officials, or to precisely say “by corrupt government officials,” because they’re all corrupt – they revalued the gold to $35. So the investor lost out. And I think what will happen, the US will eventually, under some kind of an excuse, whether it’s terrorism or whatever it is, expropriate gold. They’ll pay, say, at today’s price, $1220 an ounce, and then they’ll go to the ECB.

The ECB and the Federal Reserve are one and the same. The Bank of England also. They talk to each other every day. They’re the chief manipulators of everything. And then they say to the ECB, “Well, because we do it, you also should do it,” and the Draghi-type of – I don’t want to say what I think of him, but I say, Draghi-type of personalities, they’re saying, “Yeah. Yeah. We’ll do it also,” and then the Bank of England, of course, will do it also. Then they knock on the doors of the thrifts and say, “You thrifts, you also have to do it,” and the thrifts, they have no backbones anymore. The thrifts will say, “Okay. We’ll also do it.”

And so the threat is really for an investor, is where do you store your gold? Because if you have it in a bank or in an ETF, it may be taken away. And whereas I think that the Sprott Physical Gold are the best ones. When the US knocks on the door of Canada and says, “You have to do the same,” the Canadians will also say, “Yeah. Okay.” And so the best, probably, to store gold in Dubai, in Hong Kong, Singapore, physically.

Friday, February 6, 2015

The problem with communism was that the whole economy was run by the government. In other words, essentially the whole economy was 100% government. That was a problem. In Singapore we had the leader, for the last, essentially, 50 years, and he’s done a great job. And in other countries also we had great leaders, but the issue really is, “How much government do you want? How much transfer payments do you want?” In my view, a small government is the best, the maximum, say 15 to 20% of GDP. But now, in the Western world, we have, through all the transfer payments, governments that are close to 50% of GDP, and in some countries, more than 50% of GDP.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

“What is a legitimate government?” Today we have a government, basically in the Western world, that has more voters who receive something from the state then people that actually pay for it. And so I think that democracy is an untested system. We had, maybe, 7000 years of history of civilization, and democracy is precisely, roughly maximum 100 years old, maximum, because in many countries, full democracy was only introduced less than 100 years ago.